Monthly Archives: January 2010

Alexander van Slobbe is quite an entrepeneur. As front runner of the Dutch modernist fashion movement in the 1990s he achieved most of his successes outside his homecountry. In fact his main line Orson+Bodil only has three points of sale in the Netherlands. He has collaborated with Puma and Marc Jacobs amongst many others. His work is all about construction and styleful minimalsm. The Dutch modernism movement definetly does not come close to my personal aesthetic, but i have deep respect for people who work this hard and achieve so much influence in the world coming from this dot on the map we call home.

pieces from his fall/winter 2009 Orson+Bodil collection

His work has been collected for an overview by the Centraal Museum in Utrecht and will be presented in a special exposition called:

Stof tot nadenken(which literally means thinkingmaterial, but is being officially translated as Fashion for Thought )

from Feb 13th to May 16th 2010 at the Centraal Museum Utrecht

Here comes the best thing! Almost as interesting as the exposition, if not more(to me anyway).. is the fact there will be an accompanying project called “Patroon Ontrafeld”(“pattern untangled“)which will include patterns of Slobbe himself available in a sewing workspace in the museum as well as creative workshops with famous artists and designers and a “sewing for dummies” workshop. As a finale to all this goodness there will be a fashion show and design contest.

pieces from his spring/summer 2009 collection

mini biography: 1984 graduated cum laude at the fashion academy in Arnhem
started the label orson+bodil in 19891993 started menswear label SO and was the first Dutchman to have his own show in Paris in 1993.
In 1995 had over 200 selling points all over the world and soon after over 20 of his own stores.2003 recieved the prince Bernhard culture award

Staying on topic with wardrobe/closet inspiration. I discovered a site that needed it’s own post here for sure. It feautres little style and wardrobe tour video’s of various fabulously creative girls and boys.

It’s absolutely brilliant and worth checking out cause it gives you more of an inside into personal style of real people. More so than just random streetstyle pics. It’s like one of those people would take you home and show you around their closet. I love seeing how excited these people are about fashion and their style. It’s very recognizible and made me all giddy watching. If you wanna watch all videos your sunday afternoon will be lazy but well spent, mine certainly was 😉

I’m in the mids of renovating and decorating my new home. The one room i’m embarassed about having not gotten to YET is my closet(or the 10 square meter former study room). I have a plan but haven’t gotten around to execute it since the house had other priorities such as the main living areas. So now i have a room with a big pile of clothing bags and moving boxes and it frustrates me every morning having to dive in there to search for single items not being to find anything .. trust me it’s no fun. So to motivate myself i filled my clostet inspiration folder on my computer with jpg’s galore . Sometimes highly unrealistic but jawdropping, envy-envoking pictures.. but now it’s time to share some of that with you guys and maybe it will be the kick in the … i need to get started on mine 😉 Practical storage solutions i guess are organizing everything till you can’t organize anymore; plastic containters, double rails, using the whole space you got(so as high as you can build the system is best). I chose pictures of some of the more atainable closets. I don’t want to make myself feel worse.

this is also part of my master plan- one glamourously wallpapered wall.

it really adds an atmosphere of ultra stylishness

i think this is a changing room, but the wallpaper is gorge

light and spacious feel

ceiling is the limit

not afraid of colour

love the chandelier

this is still within realistic proportions right??

love the rug but i’d need a housekeeper to keep the room dust-free

Olivia Palermo’s closet- the big mirror is not only practical but makes the room look more spacious

this is if you rather have clothing room that a living room

If you have a simple clean clothing collection or want to display your prettiest clothes a single rail(or branch) storage is for you:

Some quick Primark gossip: First, the pictures of the spring collection are here. This season it’s very “English rose romantic”: lace shirts, florals prints and straw bags. I like it, but I will skip the denim on denim trend in the second picture (Yes, I know it’s very Chloe ss2010, but I bloody hate it. Die trend! Die!).

And for all Dutch Primark lovers: a second store will be opened in the centre of Nijmegen in 2013!

Nothing better than spending a cold evening with a big pile of fashion books. My newest purchase is this book about Italian fashion during Mussolini’s Fascist regime (1922-1943). The authors of this book, Mario Lupano and Alessandra Vaccari, collected images from women’s glossies, magazines, photo archives, journals, catalogues, design and architecture to show the rythms, rituals and lifestyles of a typical Italian day. There are four themes: “Measurements,” “Model,” “Brand” and “Parade.” The thing I like about the book is it’s weird combination of glamour (pretty women smoking in elegant suits) and “science” (how to restructure your face, as as shown on the picture next to the mud mask).

Hopes are high and grand for this very anticipated film: “Gainsbourg: vie héroïque”. It’s a bio-pic about the life the of the legendary(i would not use the word heroic, cause he was kind of an asshole as the movie also points out in his relations with women, but a musical legend he certaintly was) Serge Gainsbourg. It follows him from early childhood to his death at the age of 62 in 1991 and the many women that crossed his path during that time obviously take up quite a significant part of the movie. It stars a cast of brilliant look-a-likes such as Eric Elmosnino as Serge, Laetitia Casta as Brigitte Bardot and Lucy Gordon(who committed suicide after the movie had been shot) as Jane Birkin amongst others. I’m excited to see how it turned out. Bio-pics are a tricky genre, but it looks promising and i’m already inspired by the 60s home-decor and clothes styling as seen in the previews!

Release dates:

January 20, 2010 (France)
January 27, 2010 (Belgium)
March 18, 2010 (Russia)
April 15, 2010 (Netherlands)
September 30, 2010 (UK)
No US release date announced as yet.

When i stumbled upon this band the first thing in read on their myspace page is that they cathegorize their music as “21st century psychedelia”. I love old psychedelic rock so it seemed unlikely i would and usually i don’t like something new done in that style, so i sneered and looked further out of mere curiosity. The first thing i thought about when listening to one of their songs “Woman” was hello Jefferson Airplane, nice to have you back. My cynicism however was quickly replaced by genuine interest and i listened and looked further..there’s definetly more to them.

Rodeo Massacre are exactly what they claim; a band that makes “21st century psychedelia”. Or a modern take on 70s psychedelia music would be also be an accurate descbribtion. ah po-tay-to poh-tah-to..

This Swedish/French band fronted by the lovely Eleonora “Izzy” Lindqwister have their found their own spin on something classic and bring a new cool and suave to it and look cool and stylish while doing so.. But if they come around this neck of the woods i’ll definetly go and check them out..

They don’t have an album out yet. Just an EP en a bunch of single songs, all available on itunes though.